Jean Orr Ewing

Jean Orr-Ewing (28 April 1897 – 17 November 1944) was a pathologist and a bacteriologist who was part of the small team of scientists who first isolated and purified penicillin for the treatment of bacterial infection.

Biography Orr-Ewing, the daughter of John Orr-Ewing and his first wife Ellen Clarissa (née Kennard), was born on 28 April 1897. Her paternal grandfather was Sir Archibald Orr-Ewing, 1st Baronet and her maternal grandfather, Howard John Kennard, was co-founder of the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company.

She went to Boston House School in Eastbourne and later, from 1916 to 1920, she was a student at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She passed her exam in pathology in December 1920 and was awarded a BA degree in June 1921, the year after women were first admitted to degrees at Oxford. She continued her medical training with clinical work at St Mary's Hospital, London, taking the Conjoint Diploma in 1923, At that time she was elected to a research fellowship at Lady Margaret Hall. She was the first dedicated science tutorial fellow at the college,

She died on 17 November 1944. They both worked with Florey and Chain on the isolation and purification of penicillin, work for which Florey and Chain became Nobel Prize winners. Orr-Ewing's and Gardner's roles involved investigating how newly isolated penicillin reacted with other organisms, and "making a thorough study of the principal pathogenic bacteria and their sensitivity to penicllin". "It was they who, on observing the growth of the sensitive bacteria in the presence of penicillin, came to the conclusion that it did not act like an antiseptic or an enzyme, but rather, as a blocker of the normal process of cell division". Orr-Ewing was co-author on the team's first key publication on the use of penicillin for the treatment of bacterial infection.

Orr-Ewing is one of the ten names inscribed on the memorial plinth commemorating the scientists who worked on the medical applications of penicillin, which was erected in 1953 in the Rose Garden outside the entrance to the University of Oxford Botanic Garden.

A diphtherial infection which she accidentally sustained whilst working on diphtheria bacilli, left her with a slight permanent weakness of the heart. and she was the organising leader of the Oxford University Women's Iceland Expedition in 1934. and in Switzerland. She was elected as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1938.